Pathetic Quotes

“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
― H.L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy

“Once you embrace your value, talents and strengths, it neutralizes when others think less of you.”
― Rob Liano

“If you violate laws of God, you're a sinner.
If you violate laws of men, you're a criminal.
If you violate your own laws, you're pathetic.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

“What a relief it is when we have the power to detach ourselves from ourselves, laugh at our pathetic weaknesses, and get the knack of sweeping away the certainties that are not essential in our lives. ( "Steaming ahead")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“The God excuse, the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument.”
― George Carlin

“It's nice to see something more pathetic than I feel right now.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“I looked at myself in that window, oblivious to all the people around me and I stared and smiled that particular smile. You know that smile that seems to knock you and tell you how pathetic you are? That's the smile I was smiling.”
― Markus Zusak, Underdog

“And I ask myself what it is about me that makes this wonderful, beautiful woman return. Is it because I'm pathetic, helpless in my current state, completely dependent on her? Or is it my sense of humour, my willingness to tease her, to joke my way into painful, secret places? Do I help her understand herself? Do I make her happy? Do I do something for her that her husband and son can't do? Has she fallen in love with me?

As the days pass and I continue to heal, my body knitting itself back together, I begin to allow myself to think that she has.”
― Mohsin Hamid, Moth Smoke

“Really?" [Catarina] said when he opened the door. " Two years and then you come back and don't even call for two weeks? And then it's 'Come over, I need you'? You didn't even tell me you were home, Magnus."
"I'm home", he said, giving what he considered to be his most winning smile. The smiling took a bit of effort, but hopefully it looked genuine.
"Don't even try that face with me. I am not one of your conquests, Magnus. I am your friend. We are supposed to get pizza, not do the nasty."
"The nasty? But I-"
"Don't." She held up a warning finger. "I mean it. I almost didn't come. But you sounded so pathetic on the phone I had to.”
― Cassandra Clare, The Fall of the Hotel Dumort

“Ivanov: I am a bad, pathetic and worthless individual. One needs to be pathetic, too, worn out and drained by drink, like Pasha, to be still fond of me and to respect me. My God, how I despise myself! I so deeply loathe my voice, my walk, my hands, these clothes, my thoughts. Well, isn't that funny, isn't that shocking? Less than a year ago I was healthy and strong, I was cheerful, tireless, passionate, I worked with these very hands, I could speak to move even Philistines to tears, I could cry when I saw grief, I became indignant when I encountered evil. I knew inspiration, I knew the charm and poetry of quiet nights when from dusk to dawn you sit at your desk or indulge you mind with dreams. I believed, I looked into the future as into the eyes of my own mother... And now, my God, I am exhausted, I do not believe, I spend my days and nights in idleness.”
― Anton Chekhov, Ivanov

“How terrible would it be to just wait there pathetically alone for him never to show up?"
Eudoxia's expression grew more serious. "That's what you're doing anyway, my dear.”
― Ann Brashares, Sisterhood Everlasting

“I PAINT MY FACE.
By Omrane Khuder.

Mirror, distorted; I sit, paint my Face,
Toxic white Make-up buries my Scars,
My Eyes tell lies; Dumbfounded Confidence hides the Disgrace.

Place the tragic Vehicle called My Life in to Drive,
Sad pathetic Clown; Late for the suppression show,
Despair another time; Let the chuckles and defeat derive.

I paint my Heart; I hide my True.
I paint my Soul; I keep it from You.

I paint, I cannot accept; To ignore you the way you ignore Me?
I paint my scarred and pitiful Face; No Will left to restore Me.

I paint my Face; it’s all I know to do.
My painted Face shatters the Mirror, yet still all I see is You.”
― Omrane Khuder

“Men who believe that the way to the mind is not by way of ice picks through the brain or large dosages of dangerous medicine but through an honest reckoning of the self.”
― Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island

“To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic.”
― Pablo Picasso

“You're back where you swore yourself you wouldn't be
The familiar shackles you can't tell from your own skin
Your head's under water when you learned to swim
On a road to hell, congratulations, you're free...”
― Sanhita Baruah

“During voir dire, the interviews for jury selection, each person is asked under oath about their experience with the criminal justice system, as defendant or victim, but usually not even the most elementary effort is made to corroborate those claims. One ADA [Associate District Attorney] told me about inheriting a murder case, after the first jury deadlocked. He checked the raps for the jurors and found that four had criminal records. None of those jurors were prosecuted. Nor was it policy to prosecute defense witnesses who were demonstrably lying--by providing false alibis, for example--because, as another ADA told me, if they win the case, they don't bother, and if they lose, "it looks like sour grapes." A cop told me about a brawl at court one day, when he saw court officers tackle a man who tried to escape from the Grand Jury. An undercover was testifying about a buy when the juror recognized him as someone he had sold to. Another cop told me about locking up a woman for buying crack, who begged for a Desk Appearance Ticket, because she had to get back to court, for jury duty--she was the forewoman on a Narcotics case, of course. The worst part about these stories is that when I told them to various ADAs, none were at all surprised; most of those I'd worked with I respected, but the institutionalized expectations were abysmal. They were too used to losing and it showed in how they played the game.”
― Edward Conlon, Blue Blood by Conlon, Edward (2004) Paperback

“That seemed to handle it. That was it. Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go off with him. Now go and bring her back. And sign the wire with love. That was it all right. I went in to lunch”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises / The Old Man And The Sea

“We are living out the drama of a pathetic story whose pages are smeared with our own handwriting.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Go ahead, kill me! But live with this: All those people die!

For the rest of your life, somewhere behind the feeds, that human part of you hiding down deep will always wonder how much pain you could have prevented if you hadn't been so weak!”
― Rick Remender, Tokyo Ghost, Vol. 2: Come Join Us

“It's not her fault she can't cook."
"You are too nice natured, darling. You won't get anywhere in this world being kind and generous. You must turn into a lioness like me and gobble up people who disagree with you."
"I'm not very good at gobbling," I said. "And I want to like people, and be liked by them."
She sighed. "The sooner you get married and have babies to adore the better.”
― Rhys Bowen, Heirs and Graces

“Pathetic. I would call it pathetic.”
― Petra Hermans, Voor een betere wereld

“That's . . . because I am pathetic. In life as in film, find your niche and work it.”
― Libba Bray, Summer Days and Summer Nights: Twelve Love Stories

“... jealousy wasn't a spice to me then. It was the whole meal and I was gagging it down.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“The battered and pathetic thing that represented any claim to conscience I might have had turned away from me in disgust. Oddly, I couldn't blame it. I was disgusted myself. Disgusted at my weakness and my lack of resolution, at my refusal to see justice through in the name of the woman who had borne me.”
― Peter David, Sir Apropos of Nothing

“Would it be politically incorrect to call a top-ranked female anchor (with a law degree) currently on the cover of Vanity Fair a bimbo? Or would it be rude, ludicrous, wrong and pathetic? Nothing about this is hard.”
― Kathleen Parker

“أموت ولا أنتظر عطف أو شفقة أحد !”
― أنيس منصور, مذكرات شابة غاضبة

“Listing your parents as your emergency contact is the saddest reminder that you are single.”
― Kevin Molesworth, The Rudman Conjecture on Quantum Entanglement

“To save myself I must of necessity lose myself, for I am a pathetic savior at best. Therefore, I must of necessity have Christmas.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“At the point that I’ve become apathetic about being apathetic, I have let apathy define me with such suffocating totality that I don’t even realize that I’m apathetic anymore. And it is in this darkest of places that my soul breathes it lasts long before it is dead.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“How pathetic is the man who lives as if his existence is defined by the limitations of who he is within that existence.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough